I'm getting there... an acceptable macro shot IMO

in Amazing Nature3 years ago

Finally, I'm slowly getting to what I feel is a decent macro shot of a lovely subject.

So, this morning I was scouting for a nice subject for my macro photography learning session and then I found this. The weather is making the flowers in our garden look really glowing. Controlled exposure is what I'm after with this kind of lighting. It's almost noon and the sunlight is too bright at this point.

To mitigate the harsh light, I had to install a filter on my lens to gradually block too much light from entering the sensor of my camera. As a result, the highlights of the image will not be "overexposed" or "burnt".

The trade is that it will result in an underlit image. To salvage that during the editing part, I had to set my camera to produce an image in RAW form. It will be a memory-intensive photo but it's worth it during the editing part. The image will be a lot flexible as I push & pull the sliders for Highlights, Midtones, & Shadows. Balancing these 3 levels of image exposure will make or break the image and so I had to be careful during this process.

Here's the result...

DSC029751.jpg

And here's the overall picture...

DSC0297514.jpg

It's nice but it's definitely less interesting than the zoomed image.

Another thing that I do for my photo editing is to make a black and white version. Like this...

DSC0297512.jpg

I think that whenever I remove the color of an image it transforms into a more sublime image. Since all I see are the lines & forms of the subject, I could easily judge if the photo is compelling enough or less interesting. For this image, I'm quite happy with the texture and clarity of the edges.

Lastly, I also edited the image to give it a "cinematic look". Just for fun... here's the result.

DSC0297513.jpg

Peace